Mark Ellwood's Brainy Blog of Fascinating Facts and Timely Tips

We are looking for time-stressed executive women to participate in an innovative time study.

Ideally, participants would be in senior executive roles, working for large companies, earn over $150,000, and have children living at home.

This innovative work-life balance time study of executive woman aims to understand how the portability of work affects balance. If work is expected to be done at any hour of the day, what kinds of activities require urgent attention? What creates stress after hours? Requests from bosses, urgent issues, or just a glut of unnecessary emails? How do successful women create greater control to minimize the portability of work.

To find out, executive women managing employees in large corporations will track their time on 21 activities for two weeks using the easy-to-use TimeCorder device. They’ll gather time-use data whenever work happens – at work in the office, and at home and on weekends. They’ll track a series of activities within their control and those that they have to react to. Later on, they’ll be able to see how their results compare to others who face the challenges. Mark Ellwood will present the results at the annual conference of the International Association of Time Use Research in Budapest in October 2018.

Check out the innovative TimeCorder device under the "TimeCorder" tab. (it’s better than an app!)

There are a number of benefits to women who participate in the Executive Women’s Time Study project. After tracking their time for two weeks using our innovative, easy-to-use TimeCorder devices, they will:

Receive a personal report showing how they spend their time

See how proactive versus reactive time use affects their results.

Discover what types of work activities leak over into personal time, at home and on the weekends

See where the gaps are between where they are and where they want to be

Compare their results with others – the sisterhood of executives who strive to do better.

Receive some tips on effective productivity techniques

Be part of a research project that will be presented at an international conference and across the news media

If you are a coach working with executive women, presenting this idea to your clients will give you more data in your work with them. If you are an executive, we’d love for you to participate. And if you know someone who fits the bill, she’ll appreciate your referral. There is no charge to participate in this study.

To get started, your name, address, title, and best phone number to Mark Ellwood at mark@getmoredone.com . We’ll confirm your interest and ship you a TimeCorder device. Then with a quick telephone orientation you're all set to go. Your time is worth it!

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

There was something odd about my day at work today. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but in a strange way I felt as though I were tangled in a web, caught in a trap of overwhelming clichés from which there was no escape. Let me explain.

It all started when I arrived right on the nose at 9:00 a.m. and began some heavy number crunching. Once I got my nose into things, it dawned on me like a ton of bricks that the business was taking a real nosedive. Not only that, but my nose was itchy. We were sitting on the edge of disaster in a sink-or-swim situation, and that was just the first of many aqueous metaphors yet to come. I asked my assistant if he had a minute to discuss the matter, and he popped in for a second. Somewhere, fifty-nine seconds had been lost.

When I informed him that the business was going downhill, he offered to take a stab at the situation. This seemed perfectly appropriate, as he was brandishing an Exacto knife at the time. Conceding that I was in the dark about what to do, I asked him to shed some light on the matter. So he turned the lamp switch on. Brilliant idea.

I then shot off to a meeting, where the financial director got on my back about reduced profits. This was a crushing blow, and it didn’t do much for my posture either. Back on my own turf in my office, I tried to touch base with the production manager. Getting in touch with her was difficult, and we ended up playing telephone tag. Unfortunately, no touchbacks were allowed.

After an eternity, we were finally able to get our heads together. This was a somewhat difficult maneuver, considering we were on the phone at the time. She wanted to chew the fat, so I suggested she try the Swiss steak, today’s cafeteria special. She decided to sit on the problem until it blew over, but I insisted we tackle it head on from all sides. We were getting squeezed on our costs, but our bottom-line commitments had already been locked in. To make matters worse, someone had lost the key.

I passed the buck to my assistant, since I owed him for coffee anyway. The project was now on his plate and I gave him the green light to fork out some dollars to get a handle on the situation and get the ball rolling. He seemed to be on the ball, a practice he had learned from his days as a circus performer. He promised not to drop the ball.

We threw some ideas back and forth and one of them knocked over a plant in the corner. After a while our impromptu blue sky session generated a whole flock of pie-in-the-sky alternatives. However, I suggested that a down-to-earth solution would be more appropriate, and just what the doctor ordered. Actually he only came in on alternate Tuesdays, but I’m certain he would have ordered it anyway.

We considered jacking up the price, blowing through a promotion offer, pumping out some inventory and firing up the sales force. Any of these would cost a bundle, but we couldn’t afford to pull the plug on our sales, or the water cooler, for that matter. I was beating my head against the wall. A few minutes later someone from maintenance came by to patch up the considerable hole I had created.

Up to my ears in work, it was time to take a breather. So I headed down to the break room, but it had burnt when someone’s idea had fallen out of the frying pan and into the fire. Then, on the way to the coffee shop, I ran into the research analyst. I fell over, and hit the ground running.
As we were recovering from the collision, I made her aware of my predicament. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help; her hands were tied because she had been tied up in a meeting.

Upon returning to my desk, my boss paid me a call. It was a good thing he did because he owed me for coffee too. He had a beef with me and flew off the handle with some off-the-cuff remarks about a write-off, claiming I had been goofing off. Before he could lay off, I laid it on the line for him. Our new initiatives had slipped through the cracks and the competition was beating us to the punch. We would have to get ourselves out of the tangle and fix the problem, or we’d be in a real fix down the road. I got out a screwdriver, just in case.

It was time to bounce a couple of my ideas off my boss. He picked one up off the floor and tossed it back into my court, saying that he would be sold on the concept if it had more meat on it. There was a skeleton of an idea but it needed fleshing out, unlike my boss, who was twenty pounds overweight.

Later, my assistant and I thought we had the problem licked. But my boss jumped out of the boat, leaving us high and dry, up the creek without a paddle. It looked like our idea had been blown out of the water. We needed something to bail us out. So I grabbed a used coffee cup and began scooping up the ever increasing flood of metaphors that had filled my office.

Coffee cup in hand, I realized we had to do something to keep the ball rolling. So my assistant suggested another circus trick. It was time to put another idea on the table, but my boss said the proposal just wouldn’t cut it. No wonder. The table was made of metal. If we were going to rally back with a counterattack, we would have to gather our forces and strike while the iron was hot. It had been set at delicate linens.

Finally an idea hit me. Ouch. The solution had been staring me in the face all the time. So I stared back. This was tough, though, because I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. All the time we had been barking up the wrong tree and going out on a limb for the low hanging fruit when the solution was a grassroots idea that was within our grasp. Sort of like cheap bananas.

It seemed the new concept would hold water, so I decided to test the waters to see if the idea would float with my manager. I brought along a life jacket, just in case.

Out in the hallway we flagged down the president. We ran our idea up the flagpole with him, but he raised a red flag. This wasn’t the time for flag waving, though, and for a moment it looked like we would fall out of bed, flag held patriotically in hand.

Nonetheless, we had already geared up for his comments and managed to pull it all together. The president said he would buy into the plan, but was a bit short of cash. So someone lent him a dollar. When the production manager caught wind of the proposal, he too jumped on the bandwagon. In fact, this was the most exercise he had had since jumping to a conclusion earlier in the week.

So we found the solution. We pulled an all-nighter to fix the problem – keeping in mind the 80-20 rule, we gave it 110% for 24 -7 and at the end of the day, when the dust settled, I was ready to pack it in and wrap it up. I just hoped the courier would deliver it on time.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Life rushes at you. Deadlines, requests, e-mails and meetings. You’re in a reactive mode, getting through the day but with never enough time to plan for the major projects. Here’s a technique to make sure you get to the big stuff. Every day, write out a list of activities that need to be done. Your to-do list. There’s nothing new about that. What’s new is a key question you should ask; “If I had nothing else to do today, what activities could I finish that would affect my results one month from now?” Imagine a blank slate. Nothing else to do. What projects would you attack? You’d make sales calls. Or develop next year’s budget. Conduct a performance review. Research a new initiative. These are your “A” priorities. They shouldn’t be confused with the urgent responsibilities you also need to complete. You always find time for those. The “A” items though sometimes get slotted in last. They shouldn’t They’re the things you should plan for first. So make an appointment to do them. Block off time for them. And even though you can’t complete an entire project in one day, there should be something you can complete to move it forward. You can’t do the entire budget today, but you can complete the competitive analysis. That would be an “A” priority. Schedule time for it. And don’t allow other people to interrupt your appointment with yourself, unless it’s a real emergency. Most interruptions can wait at least an hour. After all, your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Our time study data indicates that the average employee spends 19% of his or her time on administrative tasks.

This increases to 25% for managers. For many of them, delegation of some tasks would free up more time for high priority activities.

But employees make all kinds of excuses for not delegating. They justify their inefficiency through beliefs that are unfounded. If you want to make better use of your time, you’ll get more done through delegation. Catch yourself when you say one of the following. Often, the opposite is true!

I don’t know if I can trust her to do it.

I could do it better myself. He isn’t qualified to do it.

She doesn’t want any added responsibilities.

I don’t have the time to show anyone how to do it.

There is no one else to delegate to.

He already has enough to do.

I like doing this task, or I’m the only person who knows how to do it.

She messed up last time, so I’m not giving her anything else to do.

Assume that most people want added responsibilities (don’t you?). Assume they are keen to learn. Recognizes that the short term training investment will pay off in the long term.

Look around. Even though you’re not the boss, there are people who will help you if you approach them in the right way.

WHAT TO DELEGATE:

Items that can be eliminated. If you shouldn’t be doing an activity, then perhaps you shouldn’t be giving the activity away to others. Eliminate it.

Minor decisions that can be found in policy

Fact-finding assignments

Preparation of rough drafts of reports

Problem analysis and suggested actions

Collection of data for reports

Photocopying, printing, collating

Data entry

Email sorting

Things you are good at and do too much of

Things that aren’t part of your core competency. For small businesses, these include accounting, web site design, deliveries, hardware upkeep, software help, graphic design, travel arrangements, patenting, legal issues and even HR functions such as payroll.

PLANNING

Invest short term time in training to gain a long term increase in productivity.

Others may end up doing a better job than you can or finding new ways to complete a task.

Delegate, don’t abdicate. Someone else can do the task, but you’re still responsible for the completion of it, and for managing the delegation process.

Delegate to the right person. Don’t always give tasks to the strongest, most experienced or first available person.

Spread delegation around and give people new experiences as part of their training.

Obtain feedback from employees to ensure they feel they’re being treated appropriately. A simple “How’s it going with that new project?” might be all that’s needed.

Be sure to delegate the authority along with the responsibility. Don’t make people come back to you for too many minor approvals.

Trust people to do well and don’t look over their shoulders or check up with them along the way, unless they ask.

Be prepared to trade short-term errors for long term results.

DELEGATION INSTRUCTIONS

Delegate the objective, not the procedure. Outline the desired results, not the methodology. What needs to be done and when should it be finished?

Make sure the standards and the outcome are clear. To what degree of quality or detail?

Clarify the decision-making authority the delegate has.

Outline the resources available.

Ask if there is anything else they need to get started. They’ll tell you. (This can save you time spent showing them.)

Ask people to provide progress reports. Set interim deadlines to see how things are going.

If appropriate, let others know who is in charge of the task.

Give praise and feedback at the end of the project, and additional responsibilities.

Always look for opportunities to delegate, even when there appears to be no obvious person to delegate to. There usually is. Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Have you got six minutes? Here’s a punchy radio interview with some practical tips for managing your time. Along with the tips, you’ll hear time study insights from our work measurement and process improvement projects. Give it a listen, and share it with your colleagues. Your time is worth it !

(Click on the link below, and wait a few seconds for the file to load.)

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Sometimes it is difficult to say no. An urgent request comes your way and it has to get done. Right now. Yesterday if possible. If you could say no and turn down the request, you’d have more time for the things that count. But the situation demands action and you can’t refuse. You’re not too happy about it. In that case, you might just have to say yes. But when you do, take control of the situation rather than letting it take control of you. Provide suggestions or alternatives to the person making the request. “I can help you by finding out who really should be doing this,” or, “How about if I show you how to do that and then you’ll be all set to go.”

Or, agree to the request this time. But ask how the two of you might plan better to avoid a rush the next time.

Another strategy is to tell the person “yes”, but remind them that they owe you one. For example, if you have to fill in for them at work, they might reciprocate by covering you for a shift the next time you need time off.

You can’t always say no, but you can you can take control by setting the timetable on your own terms. For instance say, “OK, I think I can squeeze that in. I expect I’ll be able to get it to you by four o’clock today. Does that work?” Set the schedule rather than letting someone set it for you.

Finally, consider putting a tough condition on your agreement. “If it would only take an hour, I’d be able to help, but I can’t give you more than that.” When in doubt, it’s easier to say no now, and then change your mind to a yes later, rather than the other way around.

So take control and manage those interuptions. After all, your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

One reason that people dislike meetings is that they are not well planned.

If you are the chair for the meeting, some preparation steps can make a big difference. And even if you are not the chair, you can ask that these be done.

Writing an agenda in advance forces you to determine which items you want to cover. You can also use the agenda to communicate to participants what they will be considering and what is expected of them. An agenda helps create order and control at the meeting. Ideally, those attending should have a copy in advance.

If you are not in charge, approach the chair beforehand to make sure there is an agenda and that your items are on the list for discussion.

The most important item on the agenda is the purpose of the meeting. You should be able to state it in one succinct sentence, such as, “To review and approve details of the annual budget.” Keep the list of items to be covered specific and focused. Ask yourself what you expect to happen after each item is finished.

Of course, the agenda needs to include the time, the place, and the names of those who will be attending and the start and end times. End times are rarely included, but when they are, you can bring some urgency to the meeting by counting down the time remaining, especially when items run long.

Consider starting meetings at unconventional times. Time study research that we conducted indicates that meetings tend to start more on time on the half hour, rather than on the hour. Also, if you want a short meeting, schedule it for later in the day. Our time studies show that meetings are shorter later in the day. Business has a tendency to move quickly as five o’clock approaches.

A few days before the meeting, send out the meeting invitation and agenda. Some people wonder whether they should send a follow up confirmation – often this is just a waste of valuable time.

If you’re unable to circulate an agenda in advance, write it on a flip chart or white board before participants arrive. Or give everyone a printed copy.

Meetings become dysfunctional when homework has not been done in advance. Attendees debate issues back and forth based on their impressions, feelings, biases, recollections, and quite often their loud voices. Instead, they need to come to the meeting armed with reports, research, recommendations, surveys, and conclusions from prior discussions. So as chair, encourage attendees to do this work in advance. Then, the meeting agenda will accept reports and recommendations rather than trying to formulate them. “Rubber stamping” a recommendation is not a bad thing. It works effectively when adequate homework has been done.

The investment you take to plan meetings thoroughly will result in meetings that people want to attend. Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

Employees who spend more time planning generally get better results.

This is based on evidence from our work measurement studies where employees track their time using our TimeCorder device. So make time for planning each day. Here is my favorite tip on how to do it – just two minutes long

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

It is so easy to put something off that doesn’t matter. Or at least, you think it doesn’t matter. Maybe not today. But someday it will. That aching toothache you think might just go away. The overdue taxes that maybe they won’t check up on.

All of these catch up some day. That’s when the trouble really begins.

So you need to avoid procrastination in order to prevent these negative consequences. One way to do it involves adding accountability. You need to be accountable to yourself. You can do this by writing your tasks on a to-do list. When you include items that you have been putting off, you begin to create accountability. As you do your work during the day, you glance at your to-do list and see that outstanding item. You have committed to doing it. So the time to do it is now.

At the end of the day, review your to-do list. Did you meet all of the goals that you set for the day? Did you get all the tasks done that you said you would? If not, what got in the way? An external factor that was unavoidable? Or your own procrastination? The temptation is to re-write the task on tomorrow’s to-do list. After all, you’ll get to it then. But that’s the problem. You don’t get to it. So there is a danger in repeating tasks on successive to-do lists. If your own disinterest caused you to put it off, writing it down yet again won’t change things. Instead, write down a small part of the task that you could very easily do. For instance, you need to clean up your basement. You haven’t yet. However, you could certainly go down there and list all of the boxes you need to go through. And if doing your taxes is too daunting, how about simply gathering up all of your tax receipts and putting them into a pile? It’s a start.

There is another even more powerful way to build accountability. And that is being accountable to someone else.

Take a task you have been procrastinating on. Break it into small pieces and choose the first step. Then make a deadline. When are you going to accomplish it? And what will it look like when you finish? You can’t just say, “Work on a project…” Instead, you need to say, “Complete the research from three sources required for the project…”

Now, here is the all important accountability step. Let someone else know what you plan to do. And ask them to check up on you. It could be a spouse, partner, parent, boyfriend, girlfriend, neighbor, work buddy – anyone. It’s helpful, but not necessary that they have a stake in the task. If you need to do a household repair, then telling your spouse is a good idea, because your spouse will benefit from the task being done.

So stop procrastinating. Build accountability. Find a buddy and get stuff done.

Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.

You can learn a lot about productivity from a home renovator.

We had some work done in our basement recently. It’s the kind of work that anyone might do. We wanted to fix up an unfinished room, the size of a bedroom. We needed it because we rented out our house for the summer. We would be travelling to Europe, visiting museums, exploring cathedrals and remotely conducting our time and motion study projects. In the basement a small brick wall needed to be taken down – because of some previous renovations, it was redundant. And the ceiling needed new drywall to make it into a serviceable guest bedroom.

A while back, we met the contractors, agreed to a quote, and set a date for them to begin. It was a month out because they had another job to finish. That was fine with us. It seemed like good scheduling when they had a window to do our relatively small job. Maybe a week beginning to end.

But the job ended up stretching out over three weeks. On this basic productivity measurement, the contractor failed. His company had another job, and needed to give it priority. So someone showed up at our house for two or three hours to do some work, and then poof! They were gone.

The contractor thought he was being efficient by booking two jobs at once. Do a bit of work here, wait for something to be ready, then off to the other place to nail some studs, and then back to the first place again for the next bit. Two clients at once! Busy, busy.

Waste, waste is more like it. There is a huge productivity inefficiency to starting and stopping a project. First is travel time. If a job extends out for ten days instead of five, then that’s ten extra trips (there and back) for each extra day. Most trips are at least a half hour, so there’s an extra five hours of time right there. Also, most contractors clean up at the end of each day. So that means more clean up time. And more set-up time at the beginning of the next day. All those tools that were put away have to be brought out again.

And then there is reset time. All of us need time to get refocused after an interruption. Contractors are no different.

We know another contractor who is much more productive. He shows up early in the morning and works right through until the end of the day, rarely taking a break. If something has to wait – concrete drying for instance – he schedules that towards the end of the day. If it has to be in the middle of the day, he always finds something else to do. He plans out his work using basic project management techniques. As a result he finishes on time with little waste.

So the next time a contractor quotes you – ask how many other jobs he is doing, and what he does to minimize waste. Ideally, ask for a completion date, and build in a penalty clause for every day he goes over what didn’t result from a change you requested.

Your time is worth it.

Mark Ellwood is president of Pace Productivity, an international consulting firm that specializes in improving corporate productivity. His passionate mission is to improve people and processes through consulting and training.